


my breathing is light and my head is filled silly

by anthropologicalhands



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Introspection, Like a ridiculous amount, One Shot Collection, Prompt Fill, a lot of time spent in bed, this is...predominantly fluff, with ONE vaguely angsty one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2019-06-21 10:36:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15555870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthropologicalhands/pseuds/anthropologicalhands
Summary: A collection of Rebecca/Nathaniel prompt fills and ficlets





	1. fire, flames, or excessive heat

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt 'fire, flames, or excessive heat'

“You are being  _such_  a baby about this,” says Rebecca, delighted, as Nathaniel makes a line straight for the hotel room’s heater and cranks it up an additional six degrees before even doing so much as taking off his shoes.

“I’m not used to it,” he defends, as the heater rattles to life. “I wouldn’t be this cold if we had just taken an Uber straight from the airport.”

“Lyft—Uber’s still suspended in my book. In my defense, I consider it a civic responsibility to try the local public transportation at least once, and it’s almost criminal not to take it when there’s literally a BART station in SFO. And now that I know what it’s like, we are  _never_  taking it again, so you can say I told you so.”

“I told you so.”

Rebecca grins, too amused to trust herself to give a proper answer. She kicks off her shoes and unzips her coat, tossing it over the back of the chair and dumping her purse on the seat cushion. With a relieved huff, she flops down onto the enormous bed in the middle of the room, bouncing, pleased at the springiness.

As the room warms, he stands and returns to her side of the room, shedding his gloves and scarf, shrugging off his own coat and hanging it up in the closet.

“Nathaniel, it’s maybe forty degrees at coldest right now. Shouldn’t you know how to handle San Francisco weather? Didn’t you live up here for, like, six years?”

“No, Stanford’s down in South Bay. It doesn’t get nearly as cold down there.”

“Right, microclimates. You Californians are just ridiculous,” scoffs Rebecca. “You wouldn’t last a week of summer in New York. We survive actual seasons. Like, at least when it’s hot here it’s a dry heat. In New York, it’s sticky heat – like you just got doused with lukewarm soup. And that’s before you’re squished up in the subway next to a gaggle of old-fashioned hippies with bad BO.”

Nathaniel shudders. “Sounds disgusting. I need a shower just thinking about it.”

“I prefer to call it character-building,” says Rebecca, raising her voice slightly as Nathaniel disappears from her view into the attached bathroom, and Rebecca can hear the water running. Not the shower—just the sink.

“You know, it’s kind of weird that you’re defending New York,” He calls from the bathroom, his voice echoing slightly. “After all,  _you_  moved  _here_. Shouldn’t that automatically be a point against it?”

“Nah, that had more to do with lifestyle satisfaction and being zombified on bad medication than the physical environment. I’m actually morally obligated to point out when Californians are being stupid about the weather.”

Nathaniel steps back out of the bathroom, tie and belt both in hand. He deposits both on the same chair where Rebecca dropped her purse and moves to stand by the end of the bed, looking down at her. “Is that so?”

“Yep,” says Rebecca, grinning lazily up at him. “It’s so  _mild_ up here. I mean, in a few years it might not be due to climate change, but still. I  _do_  miss snow, though; it’s nice to be cold sometimes.”

“Hm, if you want to be cold…”

Rebecca laughs as Nathaniel lets himself fall forward, his hands coming down to rest on either side besides her head to support his weight; the laugh quickly turns into a shriek when he leans forward and nuzzles her neck, his nose and lips much colder than she expected. His hands, burrowing under her sweater, are no better.

“Eek! Get off!” She smacks hard at his shoulder, squirming, laughing too hard to apply any real force.

“I  _told_  you,” he says smugly, letting her push him off, shifting further up the bed so that he is lying fully on it.

“Okay,  _okay_ , my mistake. Somehow I was unreasonably expecting your better surface area-to-volume ratio to keep you warm. You know, for a guy who doesn’t like direct sunlight and can’t handle the cold, there’s a very limited window of environments you can conceivably live in.”

“Air-conditioned. That kind of environment works just fine for me.”

“Uh huh.” Rebecca rolls her eyes, but shuffles onto her side, closer to him, letting him reach over and slide his hand through her hair.

“If you want snow,” he says. “You need to go to Tahoe. It’s just a few hours north of here.”

“Yes, yes, you get every kind of weather without ever having to leave your state, blah blah blah,” grumbles Rebecca, scrunching up her nose. “You don’t need to keep reminding me. Smug Californian.”

“New York snob.”

“Buddy, comparatively speaking, I am not the snobby one in this relationship.”

Nathaniel shakes his head in disbelief, but otherwise doesn’t say anything. They lie there companionably, a little too warm and drowsy and comfortable.

“Seriously though,” says Nathaniel. “Tahoe’s nice. And it actually got some decent snowfall this year, so if you want to go, we should go. Do you ski?”

“Hm, put two strips of extremely expensive wood on my feet and let myself fall down a mountain and potentially get run over by other people for fun? No thank you. My idea of a good time in a snowy cabin is locking ourselves inside, drinking wine and having sex by the fireplace.”

“Basically, what we already do at home.”

“Not at all. When would we ever have a fireplace at home?” She chews at her lip, considering. “We should go, skiing or not; it sounds like a nice time.”

Nathaniel hums his assent, the hand in her air sliding down to her shoulder. “We can look into later. Right now, we don’t have to meet our clients before eight. What do you want to do?”

“I think you already know.” Rebecca hooks her fingers in his collar and tugs him in for a kiss— he moves to pull her under him, but then, abruptly, she plants her hands on his chest and pushes him back. “Now, not to kill the vibe or anything, but it’s a furnace in here, and it’s killing  _my_  heat. Turn it down a few notches and get back in here.”

He raises his eyebrows at her. “What happened to ‘New Yorkers survive anything’?”

“That was  _outdoor_  temperatures. Indoors, we prefer not to cook ourselves. Now come  _on_ , turn down the heat, save some electricity.”

He rolls his eyes but does as she asks.


	2. a kiss to wake up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt "a kiss to wake up"

Rebecca wakes up on her bedroom floor, feeling like nothing more than a tangled knot of out-of-place joints, all of which scream in protest when she tries to stretch out.

Wincing, she carefully eases herself to her side and—ow.  _Wow_ , this will not be one of her better mornings, and she doesn’t even have the excuse of a hangover to hold onto if anybody asks.

Once her bearings have been gathered, Rebecca turns her focus to her still-sleeping partner, lying on his back besides her, under the comforter they had dragged from the bed. There’s a certain pleasure in seeing him like this, muscles loose and relaxed, his breath slow. She slides back down on her stomach, rests her chin over her hands, studying his profile, content for the moment to drink him in before she gets him up; if she’s already sore, he’s probably not going to be much better off. Moving to the bed would probably be wiser.

She could nip him awake –he likes that, sometimes. He’s a light sleeper, she only needs to graze her teeth at the pulse point of his neck to stir him. But perhaps it would be a bit much.

Slowly, lazily, Rebecca leans over and presses her lips to the underside of his jaw; then another kiss, more insistent, against his cheek; a third dropped at the corner of his mouth. His face tightens momentarily, but his features quickly smooth out, and he blinks awake.

“Hey,” he says quietly. One of his arms uncurls from behind his head, smooths up her neck to thread in her hair. He presses at the back of her head, urging her gently forward. Rebecca yields, bending down to kissing him chastely across the mouth. The affection flares briefly, the potential of heat there and waiting, but she keeps it soft, pulling away to smile down at him.

“Hi,” she whispers.

“That was nice. What’s the occasion?”

“No occasion. How do you feel? Is your back okay?”

He huffs a laugh.  “My back?”

“Yeah. Are you feeling sore at all? Feelings of loss in any southern extremities? Unusual stiffness?”

He squints at her, confused, still half-asleep and eyes still a little unfocused. “What? No, nothing’s stiff—is this a bit? Are you trying to go for morning sex? I mean, I’m not there yet, but if you’re up for it…”

He starts to prop himself up on his elbows, but abruptly stops, muscles tensing.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

His eyes squeeze shut.

“ _Ow._ ”

“Exactly,” says Rebecca, the muscles in her back twinging in sympathy as Nathaniel sits up fully, crossing his legs under him; she can hear the pop of his bones as they shift back into alignment. “I have more padding and I’m still sore. So, how  _do_  you feel?”

“Not great,” he grinds out between his teeth, pressing gingerly at the base of his spine. “What kind of floor did we just sleep on?”

“I was told it was a vintage hardwood, but then again, the realtor neglected to mention that my house was also a famous murder house, so I would take that description with a pinch of salt.”

“Right.” Nathaniel rubs at his neck, kneading at the muscle to loosen it. “Okay. Wow.”

“Yeah, sorry.” She drags out the apology, scrunching up her face.

“Don’t be. I feel like I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I really shouldn’t have let you talk me into floor sex.”

Rebecca’s eyebrows arch high in disbelief. “Really? You’re gonna play the blame game?”

“Who’s blaming anybody? I’m only stating facts: it was  _your_  idea,” he says pointedly. “You literally said, ‘don’t stop, it’ll be better on the floor,’ remember?”

“Hey, I didn’t hear any complaints. I was just trying to keep the momentum going after  _you_  rolled us off the bed.” She pokes him in the shoulder, mindful not to prod too hard.

“I thought I had more space to maneuver. Besides, you  _pulled_  me off-balance–any subsequent rolling was me trying to keep your head from splitting open on the nightstand.” He gestures at the offending piece of furniture that sits a scarce few feet away.

“And I appreciate you for that,” says Rebecca, hand over her heart, her cadence only a little mocking. “Nothing’s sexier than being protected from a concussion. But I’m pretty sure that a stiff back had more to do with sleeping on the floor, not having sex on it, and  _you_  fell asleep first.”

“Whatever.” Nathaniel rolls his eyes at her but doesn’t argue the point, and Rebecca grins, triumphant. “If I need to see a chiropractor, it’s on you.”

“Oh, please. What are you, seventy?”

“I’m serious,” he insists. “Between this, being attacked with a pen, getting jumped in my apartment, and getting jumped  _on_  pretty much everywhere else—my back has definitely suffered.”

“And yet, somehow, you’re still into it.” Rebecca surges forward to kiss his cheek with a loud smacking sound, before hooking her arm through his and tugging gently. “Come on, we still have a couple more hours; let’s save ourselves a little pain and get back into bed.”

Without further objection, Nathaniel follows her back onto the mattress, letting himself stretch out across the width of the bed rather than up the length of it, his legs still dangling, while Rebecca pulls the sheets over the both of them and reaches over the edge of the bed to retrieve the pillows from the night before.

“Huh,” says Nathaniel after a moment, still staring up at the ceiling. “This doesn’t actually feel that much better.”

Rebecca throws one of the pillows right at his face –he catches it before it hits him, and stuffs it under his head with a small groan of relief.

“Yeah, yeah, my bed’s like a prison cot,” says Rebecca, rolling her eyes, a little piqued despite herself. “Says you and everyone; it’s not that original an observation.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.” Rebecca crawls back towards Nathaniel, pressing herself against the length of his body, one leg hooked over his. He shifts to accommodate her, unwinding his arms so that she has an easier time nestling close, his hand drifting down to rest on her hip.

“Seriously though; your bed’s not that big.”

She slaps at his chest half-heartedly, not even bothering to remove it when his hand folds over it, his thumb brushing absently over her knuckles. “I have a normal-sized mattress meant for a normal-sized person to be occasionally-or-permanently joined by a second normal-sized person,  _not_  a giant. Your bed is just ridiculously huge because  _you’re_  ridiculously huge.”

“Thank you.”

She groans at the smug note in his voice, rubbing her face against his shoulder.

“That is  _so_  not what I meant.”

“Yeah, but you walked right into it.”

She grunts, conceding the point without having to say anything, and burrows further into his side, her cheek resting on his chest, matching her breathing to his. The hand on her hip slides up to her shoulder, tracing little circles there, that lulls her further back into the undertow.

She’s already drifting when he speaks again.

“So…for the record, was it actually better on the floor or not?”

“Shut up and go back to sleep.”


	3. no time for camera obscura

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She sometimes wishes she had kept evidence that they were together, even if only for herself.

If there was one thing Rebecca was grateful for, in the loosest definition of the term, it was that there was very little relationship debris to consider after her breakup with Nathaniel.

They didn’t have any pictures as a couple, which wasn’t weird, not really. They had been together less than a month, after all, and most of that time was spent wrapped snugly around each other in various states of undress, the doors locked. And while Rebecca wasn’t against nudes, per se, (though given modern technology, she had definite concerns about their dissemination and the nature of privacy and such),  _Nathaniel_  was. Or, at least, against having any images that weren’t headshot-professional in the cloud, if the way he swiped her phone out of her hand the one time she tried to immortalize his bedhead was any indication.

“You don’t need that, I’m  _right_   _here_ ,” he had said, half-indignant and half-laughing, as he set it facedown on the nightstand and reached for her, his hands skimming up her sides, trying to tease her into distraction. She had let him, giggling, pretending to squirm out of his grasp.

It had been nice, feeling like she lived in the moment, lacking the need to preserve anything; no urgent drive to hoard every scrap of proof that their relationship existed.

Even when she was sliding into old bad habits, hungry to reach some undefinable  _more_ , she hadn’t concerned herself with documentation –she’d learned  _something_  from the tribulations of posting bihourly relationship updates while she was with Josh on every social platform known to man: particularly, the sheer agony of dismantling them after the wedding collapsed utterly under her own impossible expectations.

It’s a good thing she doesn’t have pictures, she tells herself, in the days after, when every cell in her body is sluggish and aimless and desperate for distractions. It’s safer, that she doesn’t cling to mementos and spin fantastical narratives that imbues them with more meaning than they deserved.

She can focus on herself.

It can only be a good thing.

~

But, oh, it  _stings_  when she opens those pictures of Mona across Tim’s feed.

And—it shouldn’t. She’s aware of that on a higher cognitive level. They broke up –she broke up with  _him_ , very specifically. While she can easily and righteously seethe about his petty treatment of her in his office, she has no right to be angry about the fact that he happens to have multiple pictures of his new girlfriend available to the public, images that show off how well they fit into each other’s lives. It’s her own bad brain that she needs to blame for whispering that he has pictures of the new girl in his life because she’s clearly more photogenic, prettier, more put together— _better_.

But it still fuels the already-volatile Molotov cocktail of hormones and guilt and the throb of her aching heart that has been bubbling inside of her, and the resulting reaction has her lobbing herself straight into a lawsuit, determined to neutralize them completely.

But even when she wins, and the hormones have passed through her system, the ache remains; Rebecca remembers that she won’t be fixed so easily. It feels inadequate to still feel like this, somehow; there might be more of a justification for feeling this way, if there had been something left behind to twist her heart around, something to tell herself stories about.

~

There had been one moment, before they went into the restaurant in Beverly Hills, a little more dressed up, a little more officially a couple.

She’d had her phone in her hand, had tugged on the crook of his arm to keep him from walking directly inside. Nathaniel had paused obediently, his head tipped to the side in inquiry, waiting for her next move. But then she had tucked it back into her dress pocket and nudged him forward again, pressing her head briefly against his arm, slipping back into the moment as easily as a favorite dress.

That memory is hers alone—there’s no way she would forget it, not the texture of his shirt under her fingertips, or the click of their steps as they walked in tandem, or the way the candles caught their smiles once they were at the table.

She just wouldn’t mind having a physical version, is all. However incomplete a reflection it would have been.

~

Instead, their relationship continues to exist as impressions within her body; every passing thought and notion and whim she ever had of them together coating in her epidermis; sharpening her senses to hypersensitivity and quickening her breath and heating her skin. Reminding her: that here is a person who made her feel happy and sated and loved. That she hasn’t had enough of him yet.

It is her own personal hurricane of sensation, barely constrained, stirred up each time they come into contact, a perfect storm that rushes forward and engulfs them both at the first renewed touch.


	4. old timey detective au

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt 'old timey detective au'

Rebecca Bunch’s little slice of West Covina paradise is stuck in a bind, under the looming shadow of Councilman Plimpton’s unscrupulous land deals; even worse, her best source is the damn highbender’s own long-legged, blue-eyed son, whose sharp tongue and murky intentions make him  _frustratingly_ inconvenient…until he makes her an offer she can’t refuse: access to the high-class joint where all of the councilman’s trouble boys will be gathered for the deals to be clinched.

She knows better than to trust blindly in such a plum ticket and pulls out all the stops: red dress, smokey eyes, chiv strapped to her thigh–ready to use any advantage she’s got to find the cracks in that impassive mask Nathaniel wears so closely and pin him down.

It breaks beautifully—only she’s caught  _completely_  off-guard by the sliver of conscience (and, possibly, kindness) she glimpses underneath; when she’s got the evidence she needs, before she scrams, Rebecca presses close to steal a kiss—and to slip him a key to escape the shadow himself, should he choose to use it.


	5. rules

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt 'rules'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during the 8 month time skip.

> **Unwritten Rules for Peaceful Office Cohabitation, per Rebecca Bunch, Esq & Nathaniel Plimpton III, Esq**

  1. Don’t have sex in the shared space.
  2. Don’t order takeout from the curry place on East Cameron (or at least open the windows)
  3. Don’t throw that stupid water polo ball around when I’m trying to draft a legal brief. ( ** _Addendum:_** _If you are going to steal my ball to practice your coordination, please try to avoid my head._ ) 
  4. Don’t mime our clients when I’m on a phone call—yes, those are remarkably accurate impressions, but that makes the issue  _worse_. 
  5. Don’t do that thing with the pen. 
  6. ~~Don’t stop looking at me like that.~~




	6. Despite what you think, I am completely capable of taking care of myself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt “Despite what you think, I am completely capable of taking care of myself”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place post-3.13. Speculative.

Her return to Scarsdale wasn’t supposed to be like this. ‘This’ was supposed to be her and Paula’s heart-to-heart road trip— well, sort of. Fly to New York and then rent a car and drive about, revisiting their old haunts and sorting themselves out and facing their problems together. Thelma and Louise without all the shooting.

Except then Paula got a call from her mother, the kind of call that suggested she needed to get herself on a plane to Buffalo Niagara International ASAP. A ‘family only’ kind of visit. Paula had been frazzled and thrown off-guard, and it was as much for her as for herself that Rebecca suggested that she would take the car and stay with Naomi, finally have that heart-to-heart, that she would be fine. That Naomi had been a little reserved, but open to the idea, despite the short notice. It couldn’t be too bad.

How naïve.

‘Not bad’ did not mean locking herself in the bathroom on the top floor and curling up under the sink, clinging to the pipes. ‘Not bad’ would have meant that her breathing exercises were unnecessary, that she wasn’t muttering ‘SASSY’ under her breath and being forced to try all of her old coping methods and having to discard them, because they  _weren’t working_ , not even the songs. Her mind was going too fast, splitting through every feeling of inadequacy and self-loathing with dizzying speed. Her pulse raced at a similar speed; she rubbed hard at her chest, as if that pathetic motion would sooth it.

Why did she think she could handle this alone? Why hadn’t she gone with Paula, just driven the six hours and kept out of the way? It wasn’t even that her mother tried to do provoke her—she could see that, at least. It was all on her; she just messed up the conversation, the way she was still screwing up everything, despite her promises.

There was—there just had to be something else she could do to take back her bearings.

She fumbled for her phone, nearly dropping it twice, and unlocked it with shaking fingers. She started with the gurl group chat, everything they had texted before they had left on their trip, all of Valencia’s “You can do it”s! and heart emoticons and Heather’s “Be safe, text us when you get there.”

She scrolled back a little further, to a nonsensical discussion about what would happen if the internet ran out of room, and her and Valencia’s multi-text freakout about the debut of Roxane Gay’s new book. Rereading those conversations and all of their asides made the air a little clearer, a little easier to inhale.

Except it was only a temporary calm, however effective it was for the moment. Valencia had an event this weekend and Heather was accompanying Hector to a cousin’s quincenera, so calling them was out of the question. And Paula was off-limits until she texted back an all-clear. And this wasn’t—this wasn’t a big emergency. Just…a check-in.

Almost on autopilot, she pulled up her call record and scrolled down, past missed calls from her mother and Paula and the girls, finally slowing to a pause, her thumb hovering over a very specific number.

They hadn’t spoken much by phone, not from before the hearing. Every exchange since had been in person, his resentment and fear after she went off script, her to fire back that she needed to take responsibility—maybe not exactly for pushing Trent off a roof, but for everything else she’d ever done, things that happened long before she ever knew him by name. Enough that by the time him and Paula and the others were able to ensure she wouldn’t actually go to jail for five years that both of them were tired and could agree to keep some distance while she sorted herself out and tried to start over.

_Let me know if you need anything._

He’d still said that, even when he didn’t have to. Maybe it was a courtesy, maybe he didn’t really mean it, but she discarded that thought as quickly as it came.

She knew that he had his own ways of drowning out the voices in his head, the shame and doubt when his father was too much.

If her usual songs wouldn’t work, maybe his would.

She chewed at her lip and pressed the redial.

It rang once, twice. For a moment, she remembered that he might not want to pick up for her.

Then there was a click. An uncertain pause on the other side of the line. She could hear the murmur of more voices faintly in the background.

“Rebecca?”

“Hey!” Her voice was two pitches higher than it should be and already she was cringing—that wasn’t the voice of a Rebecca reasonably in control of her facilities; that was the Rebecca who was trying to cover up something. Which was ridiculous, because that wasn’t what she was trying to do, she was not trying to hide anything, not at all. This was just a simple request from someone else with a similar problem. Nothing else to be nervous about. Not at all. 

“Hey, it’s been a while, but I just needed your help with a super quick question and you did say I could call if I needed any help, so—here I am, calling in for help. Ring!”

“I thought Darryl said you were in New York with Paula?” he said, slightly suspicious.

“Oh, I am, I totally am, it’s great. Just two besties going soul-searching together, you know? We just got sidetracked a teensy bit. Paula had to take an emergency flight to Buffalo, so I’m with my mom until we can meet up again. Except, haha, our mother-daughter bonding sesh isn’t going so hot. And I know you never met her properly except possibly at my wedding but talking with her can be like verbal Etch-and-Sketch – you think the conversation’s going one way and then she shakes her head and the subject’s  _dead_  and you’re stuck having to start over with a blank slate.”

“Okay, slow down.” There’s a note of sharpness in his voice, something she might call almost anxious. “You’re at your mom’s  _alone?_  Are you okay? You haven’t been drinking anything?”

“No! God no, I know better than to do that here. Despite what you think, I am completely capable of taking care of myself.”

“I think I know  _that,_ ” he snapped, and it stings, but before there was even time to give a suitably scathing retort (or just even hang up, because  _fuck it_ ) he hurriedly follows up with, “Wait, I didn’t—sorry, that was uncalled for. Don’t hang up.”

Cautiously, she returned the phone to her ear.

“It was,” she said, a little icy.

“I know. You caught me off guard.” She could hear him exhale deeply. “I…didn’t think you’d actually call. Let alone from New York.”

“You’re not the only one.”

He cleared his throat. “What was your question?”

“Remember when you told me you used to have this one song that you used to use to get your dad out of your head? It was like this eighties song,  _super_ repetitive and kind of terrible and totally catchy, right? Um, what was it?”

“…Are you trying to make fun of me?”

She let her head fall back against the tile; this wasn’t what she wanted, him on the defensive. How stupid, she should have expected it—

“No I’m not trying to—” she took a deep breath. “Like, normally I could remember a song like that in two seconds flat, since music is totally my thing. I just…my mom got under my skin, and she wasn’t trying to, she was actually trying to be nice, since this is the first time we’ve been together since the, uh…”

She fumbled, the words slipping cleanly out of her head. More than anyone, Nathaniel still reacted oddly whenever she directly talked about her suicide attempt.

“You know,” she finished lamely. “It was bad.”

“Yeah,” he said, after a moment’s pause, the word a little softer, and she can breathe easier. “Um, yeah, I do. Give me a minute, I need to find somewhere quiet.”

“Sure. Wait, are you at an event?”

“It’s nothing,” he said dismissively. “Just give me a second.”

She waited, while she heard the odd rustling –it sounded like he was moving from outdoors to inside. When he spoke again, there was no wind, no background half-faded chatter, and his voice came through sharp and clear.

“You still there?”

“Still here,” she affirmed. “Just hiding out in the bathroom and getting close and personal with my mom’s ridiculously nice bathmat.”

“The bathroom?”

“Yeah, I don’t really have a room here anymore, just the sofa, so the bathroom’s the safest place in the house. She puts a lot of importance into nice bathrooms. It’s amazing—all of that therapy, and it’s like ninety percent of my coping methods just went out the window the second I was in the same room with her.”

“Ah.” He was quiet. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

And it was so stupid, but she could feel her two-time heartbeat start to slow, the pain in her chest not as tight, from such small words.

“I knew it wasn’t going to be a cakewalk,” she said lightly, trying for levity. “I just didn’t expect my usual songs to not work, so…”

“So you want to borrow mine instead?” he finished, and she could almost hear the faint smile in the slight inflection at the end of his words, the slightly sad one she knew better than she wanted to. “Makes sense.”

“I hope. So, how does it go? I don’t even really have the beat.”

“Okay.” There was a pause. “You realize I’m going to have to sing this, right? You really want that?”

“I mean, you can just say it with the right rhythm, that would work too. And I think I remember the chorus, so you don’t need to sing that. Just the stanzas.”

“Thank god for small mercies,” said Nathaniel, resigned, but still a little light, like he still had the smile. “You ready?”

She cupped the phone against her cheek, its warmth radiating through. “Yeah.”

There was a slightly embarrassed pause.

“ _Try to be best, cause you’re only a man, and a man’s gotta learn to take it…_ ”

He was singing so quietly, so self-consciously, Rebecca immediately started to laugh, giddiness overtaking anxiety, flooding straight through her.

“Sorry!” she gasped. “This isn’t at you—please, just keep going.”

“ _Try to believe, though the going gets rough that you gotta hang tough to make it,_ ” Nathaniel continued, the edge of his voice wavering, like he was trying to keep from laughing himself.

“Right, right, I remember this!” she cried, the rest of the song filling up the gaps in her memory on its own. “ _History repeats yourself, try and you’ll succeed…”_

She took over, going straight through the first chorus, and she could hear Nathaniel smothering his own laughter and not quite succeeding as she dragged out the notes, and she can feel her anxiety deflating like a physical thing, replaced by the surge of bubbly, honest relief.

“Sounds like you got it,” he said, when she finished. “Need me to take you through the next stanza?”

“I think I remember how it goes,” she said, blaming her giddiness on her impulse to tease. “That was  _The Karate Kid_ , right? I still can’t believe that you actually identified with the scrappy Brooklyn kid and not, you know, the rich white SoCal boy. Then again, I can’t see you ever getting into a fight. Or winning a fight. Or riding a motorcycle. Or ignoring a girl when she says ‘no’. So maybe it does make sense.”

“Thank you  _so much_  for that validation of my character.”

“You’re welcome.”

There was a brief silence that filled between them that, for the first time in a long while, was amiable.

“Do you think that will help,” he asked, eventually. “Or do you need another one?”

“No need, it’s enough of an ear worm that it should get me through the next few days. But  _thank you_. I needed that. And…”

She hesitated.

“Well, thank you for answering at all. I wasn’t sure you would.”

“Thank you for taking my offer seriously,” he said quietly.

She hadn’t been sure, either, not having taken it during her first month of recovery, before she stepped outside the therapy bubble, but it had been reassuring to have, to know that it was there, steady and secure. That he meant his word even after everything that happened since then was a relief.

“Well, now I know,” she said, aiming for levity again. “If I ever need to remember some super macho hyper-catchy song, I’ll call you.”

“I’ll be prepared.”

“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything important,” she said, neither willing nor ready to end the call.

He coughed. “Not really. I’m at my parents’ place. It wasn’t hard to get away.”

“Oh. How have things been with them?”

“Same as ever.” There was a pause. “It was…good timing, actually, that you called when you did. Pretty sure I’ve been released of my obligation to speak to either of them for the rest of the evening.”

She winced, even though he couldn’t see it, eyes screwing shut. She knew that dance.

“I’m happy to give you one of my songs, if you need it,” she said, wanting to say ‘sorry’, but not feeling quite like it covered everything that she wanted to convey. “Just because they aren’t working for me right now, doesn’t mean they’ve lost their magic completely.”

He huffed a laugh. “Maybe. Depends on the song. What kind of music could I expect?”

“Oh, I use everything. Everything popular. Lots of Disney songs. Musicals. You’ve heard  _Spring Awakening,_  right?”

“Not since college.”

“There are a few songs there that might help. I’ll send you the links later tonight, if you want.”

“…I’d like that.” It had been a long time since she’d heard that warmth in his tone, and Rebecca let her eyes drift close, so that she could see the words write themselves behind her eyelids, tuck them away for safekeeping.

“I’ll make a list. And, um, hey, for the record?”

“Yeah?”

“…it’s good to hear your voice.”

The intake of breath on the other end of the line would be nearly soundless, if she hadn’t been straining to catch it.

“The same to you,” he said, still warm. “Let me know if anything else comes up. Songs or otherwise.”

“Yeah. And Nathaniel?”

“Hm?”

“Maybe after…”

She started to speak, but stopped herself, tamping down hard on the words. It was too early to have that conversation, especially when she still hadn’t had it yet with her mother, when she and Paula were still hammering out theirs. Just because her thoughts were finally coherent again didn’t mean that she should share all of them. For now, it was enough to know that they were still capable of having moments like this.

“I will. I know where to find you.”

“I’m counting on it.” There was still that smile in his voice. “Good-night, Rebecca.”

“Good-night, Nathaniel.”


	7. you're getting crumbs all over my bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt "You're getting crumbs all over my bed"

Of the many surprising things Nathaniel learns about Rebecca, the most flummoxing fact he has to get his mind around is that she is an early riser. She might be consistently tardy and enjoy lazing around in bed (among other activities) for hours at a time, but she doesn’t tend to sleep late. In fact, most days, she’s awake before he is.

Like this morning, when he can hear her shuffling around on the other side of the apartment, softly enough that it’s not the noise that wakes him so much as the novelty awareness that there is someone else moving around in his apartment at all. By the time he sits up to investigate, she’s ambling back towards the bed, carrying a plate stacked with baguette slices and munching on one of them.

“G’morning,” she says, around a mouthful of crust, not quite managing the vowels.

“Hey,” he says, a little confused, because since when does he have bread in his kitchen? He squints past her at the remains of the baguette and the yellow tub of butter sitting on his counter, looking entirely out of place against the black marble. “When did that get in here?”

“I brought it over last night,” she says. “It was supposed to go with dinner, but, well, that didn’t happen. So it’s breakfast.”

He nods—that’s logical enough—and then she surprises him by climbing right back into bed with him.

“Hey,  _hey_ , what are you doing?”

She settles down against the headboard, one leg tucked under the other so that the shirt she’s wearing rides a little higher up her thighs.

“You’re up; I’m keeping you company instead of sitting alone at your weirdly long table.”

“You’re getting crumbs all over my bed.”

“No, that’s why I have a plate, see?” She wiggles it a bit to make sure to draw his attention. And okay, he’s basically been letting her drive whatever this thing is between them forward, more than happy to be along for the ride, but it’s his place and he does have some hard and fast rules.

“Still messy.” He looks pointedly at her fingers, the pads of her thumb and forefinger lightly dusted with flour. She rolls her eyes and licks them clean, grinning at him as he shakes his head.

“Don’t worry, it’s not like there’s anything that’s going to stain. Well, there’s butter, but these aren’t even toasted because you don’t have a toaster, so it’s not melting all over the place.”

He eyes her, decidedly unimpressed. She shrugs, unapologetic.

“Hey, I get it, you’re not a fan, but me and butter go  _way_  back, in ways you can’t even begin to understand.”

“I’ll bet,” he drawls. She elbows him in the ribs.

“It’s no joke—have you seen their advertising campaigns? They’re weird but they speak directly to my life.”

He huffs a laugh, amused despite his initial annoyance. She finishes her first slice and picks up the second, biting it in half. It crackles loudly.

“Okay, seriously, you are going to get crumbs all over the bedspread.”

“At least it’s not an actual  _spread_  on the spread though, right? Ever tried to get rid of Nutella stains?”

“That doesn’t help—look, there is a no-eating policy in this bed.”

She pauses and stares at him, eyes innocently wide and blinking, in a way that immediately puts him on guard.

“R _eally_?” she asks archly.

“Yes,” he says, but with less conviction than he usually possesses. There’s a twitch at the corner of her mouth that is threatening to become a smirk and those rarely bode well for him.

“Oh, is that a new policy change?” she asks delicately, head tilting to the side, the twitch morphing into a tiny smile. “To be clear: no eating? In  _this_  bed?”

Oh god.

She continues, mock-serious, “That is new policy. Very new policy. I don’t think I like this policy. In fact, not only do I not like this policy, I find it very concerning that you moved so fast in dictating it, because for the last week that has, like,  _most definitely_   _not_  been my experience in this bed—”

“ _Rebecca_.”

“—and I’ve gotten used to, shall we say, certain standards? How extensive is this new policy? Does it cover all mouth action? Licking?  _Sucking?_  Because I have to warn you—"

“Oh my g—no eating  _food_  in the bed.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezing shut.

“Can I get that in writing? Because I’m gonna need that in writing.”

“ _Stop,_ ” he groans, mostly in self-recrimination, letting himself fall back on his pillow, hands over his eyes. “It’s way too early for this.”

“Oh come on, you walked right into that one.” She’s still laughing as she leans over him, her unapologetic grin visible through her hair. “I had to do it.”

“If I let it go  _this one time_ , will you stop?”

“For now,” she says sweetly.

He watches her pick up her crescent moon of a crust, pinch it together and pop it into her mouth, before placing the plate on the nightstand, brushing her hands over the plate after a pointed look over her shoulder at him, to make sure he’s watching. When she’s done, she scoots a little closer, one of her hands reaches out to nestle in his hair, stroking from his temple down the base of his neck and sending pleasant shivers travelling the line of his spine: a peace offering, of sorts. He shifts onto his side and leans into it, and lets his own hand travel between them, coming up to rest on her thigh.

“I do have a toaster, you know,” he says, changing the subject. “It’s in the cabinet. Just take it out when you need it.”

She looks down at him, eyebrows raised.

“Seriously?” She draws the leg nearest him up, bending at the knee.

He shrugs. “What? You might as well use it.”

“No, it’s not that. I’m surprised you have a toaster at all.”

He frowns. “Is it a surprising fact?”

“Honestly, a little bit? I had this idea that the only appliance you actually used was the blender.”

“I’m not a complete savage,” he says, mildly offended.

She holds up her hands. “Hey, no judgment. If Heather didn’t live with me, none of my kitchenware would ever see the light of day. Seriously, though, where was the toaster? I went looking for a toaster. Did you put it on a top shelf somewhere?”

His hand climbs her knee and squeezes before slipping down her calf towards her ankle. She tracks its journey, eyebrow quirking up in a silent question, like she’s trying to guess if he has any ulterior motives beyond just enjoying the warmth of her skin.

(And, well, he does. But like most plans involving Rebecca, they are nebulous and subject to change at a moment’s notice.)

He shrugs. “I don’t eat bread. But it’s in the cabinet above the microwave.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “Well, no wonder I didn’t find it. If it’s not on the first shelf, I’d need to climb on the counter.”

“Not like that’s the worst thing you’ve done to it.”

Her fingers bite a little more as they scrape behind his ear in gentle remonstration.

“I’m just saying. Leave it on the counter like a normal person.”

“Or I should get a stepladder for you, then,” he teases, amused. “So you can reach the top shelf.”

“Don’t condescend to me. Your kitchen is ridiculous. Who even has that kind of reach?”  

“I do.”

She looks at him skeptically. “Do you?”

“Again, is it that difficult to believe? Everything in this apartment is meant for someone a foot taller.”

“Hey, buddy,” she sits up a little straighter, eyes narrowing, and jabs a finger into the hollow above his collarbone. “You are  _not_  a full foot taller than me. Don’t count whatever that thing is that you usually do with your hair. It’s eleven inches and  _no more_.”

And he knows it’s not in his best interest, but he can’t resist poking, “Spoken exactly like someone who can’t reach the top shelf.”

She actually  _growls_  at him.

“Oh, don’t be  _greedy._ ”

Well, that’s a new one. He’s still got a hold on her ankle; he hefts it, pulling so that she has to fall back on her elbows to keep glaring at him. His thumb brushes deliberately over the delicate skin there, appearing to contemplate it, but keeping one eye on her, gauging her reaction. She’s got her lip between her teeth and the furrow between her eyebrows is more playful than angry.

“Greedy?” he asks lightly.

She tilts her chin up at him, tossing her hair back as if she is entirely unaffected, as if he couldn’t see that her pupils are blown wide and dark.

“Greedy,” she affirms. “Tacking on extra inches where you think no one will notice.”

“I don’t have to add any inches. What I have is more than enough.”

And yes, okay, he knows he’s walking into this one, but at least this time he’s doing it deliberately, and it’s worth it to see how she is actively chewing on her lip now, fighting back the smile threatening to blossom across her face.

“Oh?” she breathes. “You sure? Not compensating for something, there?”

He rolls his eyes and tugs hard at her ankle; she shrieks as she slides down the headboard onto her back and he climbs over her, pulling aside the open collar of his shirt to nip at her neck.

“ _What_  is with you this morning?” he asks, lifting himself up to look down at her properly.

“Must be feeling a little  _saucy_ I guess _,_ ” she gasps, her laughter trailing off into a happy squeal as he dips down again to catch her mouth, determined to derail any further wordplay before something  _truly_ terrible gets cooked up.


	8. kiss as an apology

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt 'a kiss as an apology'

One of the most unpleasant revelations of working at a serious relationship is how  _ugly_  the fights can get. Not every fight is simply a match of wits, an intellectual stimulation in building tension and finding enjoyable ways to expel it once the initial conundrum has been resolved.

The roof of his apartment building is surprisingly beautiful, though Nathaniel isn’t really in the mindspace to enjoy it, and the area feels a lot smaller than it looks –he paces the perimeter three times straight before his restless energy abates enough to allow himself to sit at the edge of one of the walls. He interlocks his hands behind his head and leans back, breathing slowly, trying to keep his mind blank, to not stew over what was just said. It works, somewhat, but he still feels taut and shaky, alternating between being a selfish, righteous anger and exhaustion.

He loses track of time, just trying to calm down, trying not to wallow in everything he said that he regretted when he said them and how it’s even more magnified now.

At eleven fifty-three, Nathaniel’s phone vibrates.

_come back to the apartment_

It isn’t the message he expected from her. Nathaniel contemplates it, his thumb hovering over the unlock button. Truthfully, he thought she would have gone home—or the part of his brain that was still paranoid about losing her anticipated that she would declare that it had been too soon, that all of this was on hold until they sorted themselves out a bit more.

Logically, he knows that she won’t call the whole thing off from one bad fight—they’ve evolved past those kinds of gestures. But still, their history, coupled with a more recent self-awareness of his own failings, insists on imagining otherwise.

In the stretch of his hesitation, a new text bubble appears.

_it’s late. i’m not ready to talk about it, but i don’t want you to stay on the roof all night._

_come to bed._

He hesitates before replying.

_heading down_

He moves to stand, working out the stiffness in his back before he heads to the stairwell.

~

The inside of the apartment is dark when he opens the door, the light from the hallway only briefly highlighting the first few feet inside, but his eyes are still immediately drawn to an ill-defined lump under the bedsheets, facing away from him.

He locks the door and feels his way through the apartment, eyes adjusting to the dark with the aid of the scant moonlight from the windows, going through his nightly routine, moving quietly to keep from disturbing her.

When he pulls back the sheets to get in the bed, she still hasn’t moved, and that’s how he knows that she isn’t sleeping—angry or not, she usually shifts automatically towards a new source of warmth. But now she keeps well on the other side of the bed, her breaths slightly too even, a little too slow and controlled.

The resentful sting hasn’t faded, but it is softened when he looks at her, curled in tightly into herself. Despite his initial instinct to cling to the feeling, he welcomes it, something of the tension loosening within him.

A new impulse compels him to shift a little closer. He hesitates, because he’s about ninety percent certain that she will keep playing possum no matter what he does. But he should say something, and even if they still need the night to cool off, maybe it’ll make it easier to say in the morning, too.

Slowly and deliberately, telegraphing his movements so that she doesn’t sit up and smack him in the face –he can’t afford to crack another one of his teeth—Nathaniel leans over, carefully planting his hand on the nightstand so he can bend over her without putting any weight on her.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, pressing a dry kiss against her hair, not quite having the courage to go for her skin.

He’s settling back into his side of the bed when her sullen reply cuts through the dark.

“That’s not how this is supposed to work.”

He opens his eyes to the click of the bedside lamp and the sound of shifting sheets to see that she’s sitting up against the headboard. Her eyes are still red-rimmed and she’s not looking towards him but staring determinedly at the foot of the bed, picking at the loose threads on the sheets. She still looks a little angry, like the tension from their fight has yet to bleed out, but there’s something new in there as well.

He sits up as well.

“I thought you didn’t want to talk until tomorrow,” he says, as neutrally as possible.

“I didn’t,” she says stonily. “What was supposed to happen was that I was going to get up early tomorrow, make some tea, we would both sit down at your awful table and talk things out like adults.  _After_ I apologized first.”

He frowns, confused. “Why would you apologize first?”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, you definitely owe me a couple too,” she sniffs, slouching down a little, crossing her arms and glaring at her drawn-up knees. “But I thought we’d start with the last blow and work our way backwards. So.”

“Rebecca, we don’t need to do this now—”

“I shouldn’t have brought up Mona.”

…and there they were.

“You didn’t though,” he says, though it’s harder to sound conciliatory. That was what had sent him to the roof in the first place. “Not really. At least, nothing that wasn’t true.”

But Rebecca is shaking her head, her arms tightening over her chest. “Still. It had nothing to do with our argument. It had nothing to do with anything at all. I don’t like, actually, logically think you’ll decide I’m too much and just walk out. I really don’t. I don’t know; I was spiraling and I just needed to win  _something_ today and that was the cheapest shot.”

There’s nothing really that he can say to that, because he knows that feeling very intimately, knows how intense it can be for him, the desire to turn any perceived failure back to his advantage. He’s seen its effects on Rebecca more than once, either directed towards him or not, how it overtakes her body so completely that at times it seems like she will burst into flames with the force of it.

And it’s frustrating, because knowing, logically, what to do with his feelings and the best ways to react to them does not always translate over into actual actions. Because the second she had thrown it in his face he had seen her suck her lip between her teeth and squeeze her eyes closed and he’d known she regretted it. But it hadn’t been enough to keep him in the apartment, not when walls seemed to contract so tightly around him and her that they didn’t have any space and he had to get out, go up to the roof for air. Part of him had wanted to leave the apartment building entirely, but the rest of him couldn’t stand the idea of leaving her, of having her thinking that he would leave her, and the roof had been his internal compromise.

“Well, I could have handled things better. You told me you had a bad day—”

She laughs harshly, the sound sharp and strained.

“First rule in therapy,” she says, with a bitter twist of the lips. She twists to look at him properly. “A bad day is not an excuse to treat people like shit. And screaming at my boyfriend that I must be too much to handle probably counts.”

He hesitates, both agreeing but not wanting to, not when he is in the wrong. Not when she already feels like she spends so much time monitoring herself in every other aspect of her life.

“Well,” he says, picking his words carefully. “My responses weren’t exactly great, either, what with the defensiveness and snapping at you. And, to be honest, I probably could have picked a better time to mention that I’ve been looking for support groups,” he says with a self-deprecating twist of the mouth. “Especially when I hadn’t brought it up before.”

She exhales at that, though it’s not quite a laugh.

“Well, yeah, probably. It still shouldn’t have escalated like that. There’s no excuse for fighting dirty.”

Her eyes are filling with tears again and Nathaniel would like nothing better than to shift closer and gather her up, tuck her head under his chin and hold her until she stops shaking. But he’s gotten more used to things he didn’t let himself think about before he came to West Covina, like how emotions don’t always manifest the way you want them to, and how sometimes comfort comes in different forms that the obvious. It’s not just sadness, it could be shame or fear or some other unholy combination.

Instead, he slides his hand across the space between them, turns over and opens his hand, palm up, there for her to accept if she wants.

She reaches out so that her fingertips brush and gently curl over his—not fully accepting the contact but not rejecting it, either.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “For the things I said, and making you feel like you’re too much. I want to help, but I still don’t really know how to talk about this stuff, and there’s more to it than, well…”

It’s embarrassing already that he has trouble processing his own emotions in a reasonable manner, let alone understanding hers. He had just wanted to do the right thing for once, to know how to help Rebecca with her stuff and not be a failure at it. But then he worried that it meant he was inadequate, not knowing how to help on his own, and put off talking to her, and look where it led them.

Rebecca’s fingers flex and then slide over to rest fully in his palm.

“Yeah. I know.”

The silence is thick and syrupy and still heavy between them, but there’s just white noise in his head—nothing he can say without sounding utterly inane or without fearing that he’ll make a wrong turn.

“Man, remember when we could just fuck our way through our problems?” She tries to joke, but her delivery falls flat. “That was so much easier.”

He cracks a smile anyways. “It was definitely a good distraction at the time.”

“Yeah, we’re kind of past that.” She worries at her lip. “We have to be more careful, with all of this history, huh?”

And if that’s not true, nothing is.

“We do,” he agrees. He feels the weight of it sometimes, reminding him that this cannot be like the first time or the second—that they won’t have endless chances. Failure was drilled into him as something catastrophic, something to be avoided at all cost. Every incident was a source of shame, not a way to grow. He’s not used to approaching failures like this –in increments, with the intent to salvage and mold into something than can become part of a greater whole, a mosaic that is the stronger for the bad parts weathered.

“We still need to talk this over in the morning,” she says, still looking down at their conjoined hands, but not at him. “But I can set up an appointment for us with Dr Akopian, see if she has any specific recommendations. Think that will help?”

“Okay,” he says, squeezing her fingers. “That sounds like a plan.”

“Yeah, it is.”

The air in the apartment is no longer so heavy, more elastic, more room for reactions beyond defensive caution.

“Would you excuse me,” she says suddenly, letting go of his hand and scooting out of the bed. “I need—I need to clean up my face.” She gestures vaguely at herself, not meeting his eyes. “I’m a mess. I’m oozing. I look like a blob.”

He lets her go, sliding down on his back again and dragging his hands over his face. His stomach is still squirming, still a little uneasy, but it’s better than the heavy knot that was there before.

When she emerges from the bathroom, her eyes are a little less red and her face and arms still spattered with droplets. Instead of going around the bed to her side, Rebecca surprises him by climbing over him, so that she’s straddling his stomach. She bends down and hides her face in the crook of his neck, her nose against his collarbone. Carefully, he wraps his arms around her, sealing her tight against his chest, one hand slipping under her shirt to press flat against her back, the other curling up to rest against the nape of her neck. They stay like that, just breathing together, and he can feel how her heartbeat slows and steadies against his chest.

“Thank you for not leaving the building,” she says, her voice muffled. “And for the record, I do know that you’re trying your best.”

That really shouldn’t make his heart lift the way it does. Nathaniel smiles into her hair.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m just trying to make my best suck a little less.”

She laughs, for real this time.

“Well, that makes two of us.”


	9. five times rebecca told nathaniel to shut up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt "five times rebecca told nathaniel to shut up"

**i.**

“What are you planning with all of this?”

Rebecca looks up from her file to see Nathaniel studying her map of the country club and adjacent cemetery, his hands in his pockets. She can’t quite get a read on his tone—it seems neutral enough, and he isn’t giving any specific tells about what he makes of her set up.

“All shall be revealed in good time,” says Rebecca, wiggling her fingers vaguely in an arc, as if casting a spell. “Once they see what we can offer them, they will be dying to sign us.” She snickers. “Uh, no pun intended.”

“I’d hope not.” Nathaniel seems less amused. He also seems inclined to continue this train of thought, possibly with some interjection about his father, and so Rebecca quickly holds up one finger in objection.

“Uh bup bup bup. Let me just say _one thing_ before you give your unsolicited opinion. Just one thing.”

Nathaniel’s eyebrows shoot up his perfectly straight forehead, but he doesn’t object, just closes his mouth and tips his head to the side, a nonverbal cue to continue that Rebecca takes gladly.

“So, I don’t know how you do things in good ol’ pee-three—”

There go his eyebrows again. Wow, they go really far up his face.

“—which will not be the way I will refer to the firm with the clients,” she adds hastily. “Sorry, not trying to be flip. But I do want for you to consider this deal as a demonstration of the successful methods by which Whitefeather and Associates get things done. I know you’re all gung-ho to make dramatic changes, add a few extra zeroes to the bottom line, yadda yadda yadda, but you don’t need to fix what isn’t broken. Just sit tight, be pretty, and tonight you can tell your father that there is no need for any further corporate monkey business. Okay?”

“Are you finished?” asks Nathaniel lightly.

“Only if I’ve convinced you. Otherwise, I can keep going.”

Nathaniel gives a slight shake of his head. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Oh. Good.”

“Yes, you seem pretty confident about your move.” He inclines his head towards her. “I look forward to seeing what you have planned.”

Rebecca narrows her eyes at him, scrutinizing his expression for any indications of sarcasm or further condescension, but he seems honest enough, or as honest as she can imagine he could ever get.

“Good, you won’t be disappointed,” she says, squaring her shoulders back and meeting his gaze. “Now, serious question: are you waiting for when our victory is assured before you show off your Easter bonnet, or did you forget it at home?”

“Oh, I didn’t forget; I just couldn’t find the one that matched this tie,” he says, without a single flicker of expression.

Her laugh escapes her entirely without her permission (because it _wasn’t_ funny, sheesh), and when she looks up again she catches his pleased smile flicker across his face before he can school it away.

“Enough joking around; they’re here.” He’s back to business, giving her a pointed look over her shoulder. Behind her, Maya opens the conference room door to announce that Misters Whitworth and Stonebrow have arrived.

She flashes him a conspiratorial grin anyways, before turning to greet their clients.

 

**ii.**

When Rebecca returns to the office, she pushes herself into overdrive, slipping back into George and Saunders’s style diligence to make up for lost time. Guilt isn’t a familiar emotion when it comes to skipping work, since she can usually catch up in no time all, but given everything else she has to feel guilty about, so what would normally be a niggling little concern is compounded by the fact that in her absence, everyone else has been left to fend for themselves under Nathaniel’s watch.

Not that he hasn’t had his own problems to deal with, apparently…

It would be almost enough to make him seem human, if she didn’t have more pressing concerns to consider.

A distinctive set of footsteps approaches and then pauses right by her desk. Rebecca doesn’t look up, studying the brief in front of her diligently, in the hopes that the words will fill her head and crowd out all other unnecessary un-work-related thoughts, instead of mason jars or absent parents or the heavy air in the locked elevator.

“Have you filed that zoning motion?” Nathaniel asks her without such consideration for her industriousness, as if he didn’t just make the exact same request this morning. Couldn’t he just send a memo via email or Slack or something? Does he have to come over _in person_ to bother her and make concentration that much more difficult?

“It’ll be done by the end of today,” she says without looking at him.

“And you’re going to be in tomorrow? Definitely?”

“Yes.”

“You aren’t taking more time off?”

“ _No._ ”

“Good. Listen—”

“Does this have a point?” she cuts him off. “Because if you want me to meet _your_ deadline, I need to focus.”

She stresses the point, because that’s been his thing, tightening up the ship and all of that. Surely, he can appreciate _that_.

He regards her for a long moment, eyes narrowed, and she feels cool, sharp prickle up her spine that makes her straighten her back, a small thrill that he might pick a fight, and that would be exactly what she needs, a clean and clear righteous anger to steep in instead of this messy cocktail of guilt and regret and fear and hopelessness that has been making her stomach churn all week.

But he doesn’t give it to her, just looks at her a long moment, his expression strangely tight, fingers drumming along the top of her cubicle, abruptly pausing when she gives them a pointed look.

“Be here tomorrow,” he orders, and walks away.

She puts her head back down to her work and ignores the disappointment that sinks low in her gut.

 

**iii.**

“So, what was all of this, exactly?”

Rebecca sighs into Nathaniel’s shoulder, sleepy in the post-coital lull. She flings her arm over his stomach, ignoring his grunt of surprise, and curls in closer.  

“Are we gonna do this now? Do we have to do this now? We’re not breaking any rules. I already told you, it’s _fine_.”

She whines in protest when he shifts out of her grasp to sit up against the headboard, depriving her of her living pillow.

“Actually, you kind of just told me to shut up, which okay, sex isn’t a problem, but it still didn’t give much context.” He toys absently with the edge of the pillowcase. “Would you mind expounding on that?”

Rebecca looks up to meet his gaze, surprisingly steady even in the cooldown. She groans and lets her head fall back on the pillow.

“I was letting actions speak louder than words. Also, _‘expound’?_ You still have enough mental capacity to use words like ‘expound’? Seriously?” She prods him in the side until he squirms and reaches down to still her fingers by enfolding them in his. “I must be losing my touch.”

“Oh, believe me, it’s taking a lot of concentration,” he assures her, raising his eyebrows. “But is there anything else I should know about? Just trying to keep my expectations reasonable.”

Rebecca looks away and down to their entwined fingers, rubbing little circles on the back of his hand as she considers his point.

“Okay, fair,” she gives in. “It _is_ fine, though. Seriously. Buffalo let me get loose and think about things and, honestly, there’s no point in waiting for some designated expiration date set by my therapy, because there isn’t going to be one. Personal relationships are supposed to be more of a, well, personal judgment thing. Obviously. And on that front, I know you like me, and, well…I do like you.” He preens at that; she rolls her eyes fondly and shifts up to rest her cheek against his shoulder. “And I _definitely_ like this whole deal we’ve got going on.” She gestures up and down the length of their bodies, her leg still slung over his. “So…let’s call it a trial run, I guess? See where things go?”

It’s not much, but she means it. It certainly feels genuine enough, as much so as her pounding heartbeat and the cooling sweat on her skin and Nathaniel’s eyes on her.

The stretch of silence between them is thoughtful, then Nathaniel shifts, pulling their enjoined hands until her arm is wrapped around his waist, and his now-free hand skims up to the curve where her shoulder meets her neck, threading through her hair and staying there.

“Trial run, huh? I can work with that. Any rules?”

Rebecca pulls a face; she feels boneless and warm and happy, and any further conversations can wait until the morning. “Just more of this, whatever ‘this’ is. Because, clearly, we’re very good at it.”

Nathaniel hums his agreement, then frowns.

“That isn’t very specific—”

Rebecca groans and shifts upwards so that she is completely in his lap, straddling his hips, taking his face between her hands.

“Shut up,” she mumbles, leaning down to kiss him.

It works as well as it did the first time.

 

**iv.**

There are some things that Rebecca wishes she had known about sharing an office with Nathaniel. Beyond realizing too late that hey, being in a small room with your ex for ten hours a day can lead to compromising positions and that the bouncing ball is so much louder than when her desk was in the bullpen; it’s that it is difficult to hide anything from each other.

Which is fine and dandy when she’s making faces to break his concentration, but not when she’s having a panic attack.

It’s just that, she’s been going through some things in therapy, things that Dr Akopian has been encouraging her to work through for years, and unfortunately those things include Robert and right at the end of the day her wayward thoughts step right into a Robert-shaped minefield and suddenly she can’t breathe. She grips the edge of her desk, staring straight ahead, immobile.

She can’t move, she doesn’t want to move, but she doesn’t have to, she just needs to _breathe_ , moderate, go slowly. Walk herself out of it.

She breathes in for a count of five, hold two, release five. Then again. Then again. Then Nathaniel’s next to her, talking nonsense. She clings to the sound of his voice, grateful for it and feeling pathetic for it.

She keeps breathing. It passes—with difficulty, but it passes. Her eyes remain sealed shut.

“Rebecca,” says Nathaniel, her name slow and deliberate. His phone keeps buzzing; he ignores it. “Do you want me to stay with you?”

He’s leaning down towards her, his hand is braced, fingers splayed wide on her desk. There will be prints all over; she’ll have to wipe it down later. The other is gingerly against her back. His phone is still buzzing. He’s looking at her, and she’s trapped in his gaze, helplessly, because he’s looking at her the right way.

“I can stay,” he insists.

Rebecca feels her fingers twitch, an impulse from her synapses, or perhaps her blood, to reach out, grab his hand and just _ask_ for once, no codes necessary.

But no. That isn’t good for her. She tightens her hands into fists, and folds them at the edge of her desk and leans hard, trapping them from reaching out.

“Rebecca—”

“Nathaniel, _don’t_.”

From the corner of her eye, she can see how his hand mirrors her, the curling in of the fingers and the slide away. “Thank you, seriously, I appreciate it, but it’s fine. It passed. You can leave me alone. You have plans tonight – don’t let me keep you. Just stop talking and go.”

He hovers, still watching her, searching for something—for weaknesses, something he can swoop in and repair. She forces herself to look right back, wills her gaze cool.

It seems to work; he closes his eyes and inhales, the furrow between his eyes smoothing out, and he picks up his satchel and walks out the door.

Paula comes in less than two seconds later, asking if anything is wrong. Rebecca tries to smile, but her face crumples instead, and when Paula wraps her in a hug she doesn’t resist.

 

**v.**

After everything that’s happened, the fact that she and Nathaniel are actively trying to be friends probably counts as a small miracle. There are several rules and a contract drawn up by Paula involved, but Rebecca can admit, and she knows Nathaniel agrees, while they both need to work on their own shit (like _a lot_ ) they don’t particularly want to sever their connection, either.

They are still a little too good at pushing each other’s buttons and working through those reactions is a long, drawn-out process.

Playing games helps. It’s easier to laugh over silly words and bad puns than to confront the many elephants in the room.

Usually.

Occasionally they just get re-appropriated.

Rebecca picks up the box and, going completely against Boggle rules, shuffles the cubes around until they spell out the words that she’s looking for. When she’s done, four letters across and two down, she pushes it over to Nathaniel and sits back, arms folded tightly across her chest, scowling deeply.

Nathaniel looks down and his mouth tightens to a thin line as he reads what she’s spelled out.

“Very mature,” he snipes, but otherwise falls silent.

They restart the game and play the rest of the hour in silence. It’s still progress of a sort, she hopes.

 

**vi. (and one time she said it but didn’t mean it)**

One year out, things have improved…between them, at least.

“Has your dad changed his mind yet?” Rebecca asks. They’re sitting together at the Homebase bar, Heather tending to her other customers and pretending to ignore them.

Nathaniel just shakes his head.

“At this rate, we won’t be speaking for the next year,” he says, turning his glass absently in his hands.

“I’m sorry,” says Rebecca. It’s been weeks of the same answers, as Plimpton Sr continues to refuse to join his son for counseling and Nathaniel refuses to meet with him until he does.

“Don’t be,” he says. “He’s a jerk, we have issues, I want to work on them and he doesn’t. He knows what to say. I just wish he’d be consistent and stop leaving all of these messages. I’m going to have to block his number if I want to actually use my phone for anything else.”

He doesn’t offer any news about his mother and Rebecca doesn’t ask; Nathaniel’s more open about the things that are bothering him these days, but she knows the fact that his mother sided with Plimpton Senior over her son still stings far more than he’s willing to let on.

“Anyways, enough about _my_ parental issues,” he says, rolling out his shoulders as if that gesture itself might shake the weight of his parents’ disappointment away. He tips his glass at her. “How are things going with your mom?”

“Better, I guess?” Rebecca shrugs. “I mean, it’s a lot easier to enforce boundaries from another coast, but she’s been trying. We talked for twenty minutes yesterday without yelling at each other.”

“That’s good.”

“Wait for it,” says Rebecca flatly. “At minute twenty-one she started complaining about the fact that she has a biological grandchild she isn’t allowed to see, and then she started talking about Audra Levine’s family planning and everything went downhill from there.”

Nathaniel grimaces. “Joy.”

“Yeah. I’m starting to think she just can’t help it. And we’ve been doing so well recently, ugh.” She groans, letting her head fall forward onto the counter.

“Don’t give yourself a concussion,” says Heather, without looking up from the cherries she’s dissecting.

Nathaniel laughs and pats Rebecca gently on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry, some relative will do something embarrassing and she’ll call you so you both can bond over the judgment,” he says when she rights herself. “If your last few calls are anything to go by.”

“How comforting,” mutters Rebecca, rolling her eyes fondly at him. “And you’re one to talk about bonding through judgment.”

“Yeah yeah, I know. Look on the bright side: at least now you’re prepared for when Audra Levine actually gets pregnant.”

“ _Eugh._ Audra Levine as a mother.” Her nose wrinkles with distaste, already picturing the baby shower invitations with their curling ribbons and smug pastel storks. She scowls at him. “Thank you for that _lovely_ mental image.”

“You’re welcome,” says Nathaniel, with a twirl of the wrist, dipping his head in a slight mock bow, drawing a laugh from Rebecca despite herself.

“Shut up,” Rebecca says warmly, bumping her shoulder into his.

Nathaniel is undeterred.

“Oh please, are you telling me you don’t want to draw up contingency plans for that conversation?”

They go back and forth for a while, debating the best ways to combat the inevitable questions that Naomi will spring forth when Audra Levine finally conceives, before running out of things to say and just sitting together, not quite ready to leave the other’s company.

The silence is companionable, comfortably filled by the chatter of the other patrons, Heather’s clear directions to a new trainee, and the rhythms of their own thoughts, for once unhurried.


	10. pleasant misuse of ties

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt is 'the pleasant misuse of ties'

The bathroom door is ajar when Nathaniel returns from his errands, and there is a tuxedo jacket dangling from the doorknob that is far too small to belong to him. Curiosity piqued, he goes to investigate.

Rebecca stands before their vanity, her makeup fresh and her ponytail neat, buttoning a starched white shirt. She looks up and meets his curious gaze with a bright grin.

“Hey, stranger.”

“Hey,” he returns, taking the greeting as invitation, gesturing at the jacket as he steps through the doorway. “Nice suit. What’s the occasion?”

“Valencia’s short-staffed tonight, and due to some fiasco with a flamingo pink clothing malfunction at their last event, her client decided to take the black-tie requirement to its logical extreme. It’s gonna look like a bunch of penguins out there.” She tops off the last button and smooths down her collar, turning to inspect herself in profile and nodding approvingly, hands propped on her hips. “Not that bird suits would ever stop us from looking good. My bet is that Heather’s totally gonna kill the look.”

“I’d take that bet.” Nathaniel slides his hands into his pockets as he leans against the back wall, watching his reflection watch her adjust her cuffs. It feels a little like he’s stepped into a parallel universe, standing around in casual clothing while Rebecca suits up. “Need a top hat? Bowtie?”

Her reflection rolls its eyes at him. “Nah, we’re not so whimsical, unfortunately. And I would have just dug out your bowtie if I needed it. No, my tie is in the shopping bag, it’s right there at your feet. Could you just…”

She flaps a hand behind herself, making grabby gestures at him. He smiles and shakes his head, stooping down to do as she asks. He pauses before pulling out the contents.

“You seem to have both a clip-on tie and a regular one in here,” he observes, plucking both out of their tissue paper and holding them out to her with a raised eyebrow. “Which is it?”

Rebecca pouts and yanks the proper tie out of his hands, slinging it around her neck. “That’s just Valencia; she said a clip-on might make things easier, but honestly, might as well learn how to do it properly, right? Why half-ass something when you can whole-ass it? Isn’t that what you always say?”

“…more or less,” agrees Nathaniel noncommittally. “I think I usually word it differently, though.”

She smiles at him through the mirror as she adjusts the ends. He watches as she starts to loop the narrow end through the initial twist far more times than he normally takes with his own ties. When the silk seems to be wadding up uncomfortably at the base of her throat, not in any style that he is familiar with, he asks, “Do you need any help?”

Rebecca scowls fiercely down at her own hands, holding out the remaining length of untied silk directly outwards. “Not yet. I watched like, three separate tutorials and this should be right. This is supposed to be an Eldredge knot. What do you think?”

Nathaniel looks, not that he’s much of a necktie connoisseur to begin with, but the silk knot under Rebecca’s popped collar resembles a mauled rosebud more than anything else.

“It looks dangerous. Are you sure you don’t want the clip-on? The escape mechanism is built right in.”

She rolls her eyes at him through the mirror. “Please. Where’s the fun in that? Isn’t the whole point of having a tie is to see how to master how quickly it can be done? Or undone, as the case may be,” she adds, smirking. “You know what I mean?”

He gives her an unimpressed look that indicates that he absolutely knows she’s trying to get a rise out of him and it’s _definitely_ not going to work and clears his throat.

“Okay. Again, do you want some help? I can pull up the tutorials again. Or I can, you know, just give you a hand.”

“I mean, if you’re offering,” she says magnanimously, and turns around, chin jutted up to grant him access to her throat, and he drops his eyes from the mirror to avoid seeing how the flare of interest that runs through him ends up translating across his face.

(He’s not totally surprised – Rebecca at her most professional was always a guaranteed turn-on, if a intermittent one, and the suit helps with that.)

“I’m surprised you don’t know how to do these, actually,” he says, tugging the ends loose and adjusting the length that drapes across her neck and goes through the motions of a half-Windsor with quick, deft movements. “Didn’t you also do model UN?”

“Yeah, but no ties – it was just dresses usually. My mom would have had kittens and made a bunch of super baseless, correlation-is-not-causation claims about my sexuality. She already thought I had too much of one.” She coughs, and he loosens the knot, so it is not so close to her throat. “And, again, my specialty is undoing ties. Redoing them, well, not so much.”

That he knows well enough. Nathaniel turns down her collar, smoothing the points, before stepping away.

“Anything else?” he asks as she turns and makes final adjustments, and yeah, his voice is pitched a little lower than he intends for it to be, a little more suggestive. She catches his eyes through the reflection and her eyes gleam and her lips turn up in a soft smile, even as she shakes her head in the negative.

“Not that I wouldn’t love to see you get me out of this, but I can _not_ be late for a Valencia event,” she says, with genuine regret but firm resolve. “Especially not a black-tie.  She’d actually have just cause to murder me.”

“Probably,” he agrees. He spends time with Paula in a professional capacity and Heather is Heather, but Valencia is the friend of Rebecca’s who terrifies and inspires the most respect. He won’t deny that he’s a little disappointed, but in the last year he’s grown to appreciate not only the ways Rebecca is firmly, irresistibly the same, but also the ways she has changed.

“Speaking of black tie, this looks good, thank you.” Rebecca steps away from the vanity, pausing long enough to go up on her toes to peck him on the cheek before pulling her suit jacket from its hanger. “We’ll see how things go, but if this works out, I might make these a part of my regular business attire.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. It could solve a seriously pressing wardrobe issue. Well, two.” She gestures at the front of her shirt absently with both hands.

“Two problems?” Nathaniel can’t help but ask.

Rebecca’s widening grin warns him, far too late, that it might have been better not to comment.

“Oh, you know, it’s the age-old question: how much boob is too much boob?” she says matter-of-factly, and cackles when Nathaniel groans and covers his eyes. “Oh, come on, you’ve heard me complain about Bonnie and Clyde before. They’re always peeping out more than is reasonable to show in a professional setting.”

“You know, when you were in the Whitefeather office you didn’t seem all that concerned about it.” Not that he’d been complaining that much at the time, admittedly.

“Well, it’s a serious problem, and things that fly in the Whitefeather office might not fly in the highly competitive world of small businesses.”

“I don’t think most small businesses can afford black-tie events,” says Nathaniel, still addressing the ceiling, pointedly bypassing a choice comment about how she was responsible to piloting at least half of the questionable operations that went on at their formerly mutual place of employment.

“That’s beside the point.”

“Where _is_ the point?”

“It’s better than me bending over and asking you how far down my shirt you can see, right?”

“I’m leaving now,” he says, and ducks out of the bathroom as she laughs at him.

~

“Okay, so: ties are not happening,” Rebecca announces when she walks through their apartment door much, much later that evening. “They may look good, but I think I’m going to continue opting out.”

“Oh?” Nathaniel looks up from his laptop. “Too restrictive?”

“Big time.” she continues, sliding off her coat and dropping it unceremoniously over the back of the sofa’s adjacent chair. “Not to mention: they get in the deviled eggs, they smack you in the face if they aren’t secured properly, and on top of all that, I nearly got strangled by a revolving door.”

“Wow. That’s not good; how did that happen?” asks Nathaniel, slightly alarmed. He twists his body so that he’s sitting up properly on the couch, closing his laptop and placing it on the coffee table. But Rebecca doesn’t seem particularly distressed, just working herself up for a good kvetsh.

“Uncertain. There might have been a Roxane Gay sighting involved. Maybe. It doesn’t matter.” Rebecca climbs over the back of the chair, ignoring Nathaniel’s exclamation, and collapses into the seat cushion with an extravagant sigh. She tugs at the elastic that holds her ponytail, snapping the band around her wrist and carding both hands through her hair, sighing in relief. “Ties are _not_ going to be the solution to my boobage problem. I’ll stick to my plaids and my apron, thank you very much.”

“What a pity,” says Nathaniel, completely neutral. “How was the event? Apart from the whole revolving-door thing.”

Rebecca pulls her tie loose and starts working on the top buttons of her shirt, leaving the length of silk draped around her neck. “A complete and total success, by all measures. Like, the rotating door was a real low point, don’t get me wrong, but otherwise we were a perfectly trained, obedient flock of penguins.” She stretches, back arching and pointing her toes. “Well, a colony of penguins, if you want to get specific. I know you like that. Or is it a waddle? It might actually be a waddle.”

“Both terms work,” says Nathaniel, distracted by her suit’s deconstruction, still formal but mussed. He’s usually one to prefer clean lines and neat corners, but now confronted with Rebecca appealingly close, sleeves pushed up and throat exposed, his fingers itch to finish the job.

And given the way that Rebecca is starting to smirk at him, he’s doing a very poor job of hiding his mind’s descent to the gutter.

Not that she seems put off by his interest; she levers herself back on her feet. She tilts her head innocently at him, sloughing off the tie to wind and unwind it around her fingers in a speculative sort of way that has Nathaniel pushing himself off the couch so that they stand face-to-face (well, ish). He crosses his arms, mimicking her cocked-head-angle, a nonverbal _what are you up to, hm?_

Without her heels, she’s missing the extra inches she usually needs to climb him without help, so Nathaniel is caught off guard when, with a flick of her wrist, Rebecca snaps the length of her tie around his neck like a lasso and drags him right down to her level.

His jaw twinges when his face knocks into hers but he doesn’t mind; they just laugh and adjust, Rebecca’s hand coming up to brush his cheek, while he twists one of his hands up into her hair, mussing it further. His other hand plucks at her shirt, untucking it fully from the waistband of her slacks.

He’s thinking about just tipping her back onto the couch when Rebecca breaks the kiss, giggling, but staying close.

“Hey, want to try something?” she asks, a little breathless. “Something new?”

“What could be possibly be new for us?”

“Well, it’s not _completely_ new…” Rebecca amends, lifting the tie away from his neck and holds it up between their bodies, extended between her hands, waggling her eyebrows at him.

“Oh. Okay, I should have expected that.” He laughs. “So, will it be you or me?”

She quirks an eyebrow at him. “I was thinking both of us, actually.”

“Oh?” Nathaniel scrunches up his face thoughtfully. “How is that going to work?”

“Let me show you?” At Nathaniel’s assenting nod, Rebecca loops the skinny end of her tie once around her wrist. Then she reaches between them and takes Nathaniel’s hand, fitting their palms together, and Nathaniel alternates between watching her and watching her other hand wind the tie around both of their wrists, in alternating loops, leaving enough space that if they aren’t holding hands, they have a couple inches of give.

“How’s that?” she asks, tucking the wider end under the loops on his wrist but not knotting them.

“It looks like a confused game of cat’s cradle.”

“It’s a connection point,” corrects Rebecca. “You know those body contact exercises? The ones you do in drama class?” When he shakes his head she continues, “Well, it’s all about knowing where your partner is gonna go. Creating physical shorthand and all that jazz. This isn’t really the same thing—we never used props, and the guy I learned it from was a total douchecanoe, but this could be fun with you. Suits are stiff – I’m down for a little more _ebb and flow_ tonight.”

She rocks back and forth on the soles of her feet, obliging him to do the same.

He considers their hands, still clasped together. “This seems a little risky.”

“Not if we go slow,” she counters. “But yeah, that’s why I didn’t tie any knots. Less chance of cutting off blood flow in case we need a fast release. I call it an interesting challenge. What do you say?”

It still kind of sounds like an accident waiting to happen, but Nathaniel cannot deny the pinprick of interest, more sweet than heated, that flares somewhere low in his stomach. He interlaces their fingers and brings their conjoined hands upwards, mindful of how far he can extend, until she has to go up on her toes and when he looks at her, he can see how her pupils have grown wide and dark with anticipation.

“I can work with an interesting challenge,” he concedes. Rebecca laughs, wrapping her free arm around his shoulders as he bends his knees to lift and carry her over to the bed.

Interesting is definitely the right word for it. Taking their shirts off is out of the question unless they pause to untie themselves—a concession neither is willing to make—and Nathaniel’s greater reach, usually a pleasurable advantage, now means that he has to move more conscientiously, lest he accidentally jerk Rebecca out of position. Which happens once. Almost twice.

But they laugh and make it work and the connection does not break.


	11. five times rebecca and nathaniel ate dinner at nathaniel's absurdly long table

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> written for the prompt: five times they ate at nathaniel's absurdly long table

1.

One of the few things that _doesn’t_ surprise Nathaniel about Rebecca is how completely her penchant for eschewing decorum extends to all aspects of her life. Even when they resurface for sustenance, she prefers the informality of the bed or even the floor to the table, and despite his own inclinations, Nathaniel finds that he is easily persuaded to go along with whatever whim suits her, a fact that should probably trouble him more than it does.

But it’s new, whatever they have. He doesn’t want to rock the boat by making an issue over something that, frankly, he doesn’t see as an issue. Not if it makes her happy. Besides, it’s not like he doesn’t have limits; there are a couple of lines he refuses to be swayed across, despite her best efforts.

“Dude, c’mon. Is this really necessary?”

“I am not risking curry stains on any cloth surface in this apartment. And besides, we do need the space.” Nathaniel nods towards the selection of plastic containers they have arranged across the table which do, in fact, take up a fair amount of surface area.

“The _bed_ has plenty of space,” Rebecca points out, undeterred. “Hell, there’s room for a whole third person if either of us were so inclined.” She waggles her eyebrows at him – Nathaniel pulls a face and shakes his head to make it clear how very little he thinks of _that_ suggestion. She laughs and continues, “But seriously, how are we supposed to talk when we’re sitting, like, a yard apart?”

“…Just the way we normally talk?” responds Nathaniel, confused. “I don’t see the problem – how is talking over here all that different from talking over there?”

He gestures towards the bed, which for the first time in over a week, remains untouched from the morning.

“It’s different because I am actively engaging my diaphragm to talk to you right now,” says Rebecca, pressing one palm flat against her abdomen, as if she’s about to burst into song, to emphasize her point. “Which is just a total waste of energy.”

Nathaniel quirks an eyebrow at her. “I’m pretty sure I’ve heard you yelling at Tim across the same distance, for much longer and at a much louder volume.”

“I mean, it’s Tim.” Rebecca waves away his point with a backwards flick of the wrist. “And that’s _work,_ it’s different. How often do you even use this table?”

“It’s a very good table,” Nathaniel defends. “I used it very regularly before you started monopolizing my evenings.”

Predictably, Rebecca rolls her eyes at him, but there’s still a smile on her lips as she does that lets him relax minutely, assured that her teasing is good-natured, rather than worrying about whether he has unintentionally caused offense.

“Oh, please, like you don’t love it,” she says, and grins when Nathaniel doesn’t object. She holds up a finger. “However, eating by yourself and working by yourself doesn’t count. Are you expecting a lot of guests?”

“Not particularly, I only moved a couple of months ago. I haven’t exactly had the opportunity.”

 “I guess that makes sense,” she says. “It’s not like you’ve really made any friends yet.”

“Exactly,” says Nathaniel, and then flushes, because it doesn’t sound as final as he intended – it sounds _pathetic,_ especially combined with…whatever that look on her face is. He didn’t come here to make friends, that wasn’t the _point_. He had intended to focus on furthering his career and without the expectation that he would ever entertain anyone in such a way that would require counter space.

“All right then,” says Rebecca, seemingly making up her mind and dropping her hands from her waist to move behind the chair at the end of the table. Only instead of pulling it out to take her seat, she chooses instead to drag the chair to the place at Nathaniel’s right before settling in her new seat, one eyebrow arched challengingly at him as she reaches over to re-center her plate.

Well. It’s not like he’s about to _object_ to their new proximity, even if it goes against his sense of how meals should be conducted, not when he can so easily reach out to touch her, either to push her hair behind her ears or to fend off her prodding and teasing, or how, unseen beneath the table’s sturdy surface, her foot nudges gently against his.

2.

In retrospect, she really should have known better.

Sure, outside circumstances had left them with somewhat limited options: the office was being fumigated, but renting a hotel room to work was _completely_ out of the question, so far the threat of public exposure hasn’t yet been enough of an incentive to prevent them from finding and squeezing into small enclosed spaces together, and her place was out of the question because it was consistently haunted by an increasingly furious, pregnant Heather and a placating Hector. I

None of that made Nathaniel’s apartment a viable option. But she was under the foolish assumption that his place might have lost its charm for her, given that it was, after all, the site of her only self-initiated breakup. She presumed that the knowledge of another person with access to the space would be an active deterrent. Even if Mona was out of town for the week, it wouldn’t be a problem.

And if that wasn’t wishful thinking, then she must be a fucking genie.

Because—surprise, surprise—returning to the apartment she basically lived in for two weeks straight while under the impression that she was better and ready to find love again, for real, with someone who actually liked her, is not without emotional baggage. The neutral space she imagined is entirely a fabrication. In fact, it turns out that being acutely aware that she no longer belongs there turns her notion into a downright _terrible_ idea.

Rebecca squints down at her notes, fighting down the beginnings of a serious headache. “Okay, so we need to make sure that the Crawfords don’t do anything stupid—"

 “Good luck with that,” Nathaniel scoffs, rubbing his own temples, though whether to combat a headache of his own or because the Crawfords are that terrible, she’s not entirely sure.

Another possibility, one that she really doesn’t want to think about, is that he’s trying to think about literally anything other than her presence back in his apartment.

“Wow, that is a super helpful interjection, right there. Very mature, Nathaniel.”

It’s the seating arrangement, she decides, that is responsible for the unusually tetchy tension between them, crammed together as they are on one side of his stupid too-long-but-somehow-still- too-short table, their notes spread out entirely across the surface, save for the cubic inches dedicated to her carton of kung pao chicken and the inadequately tossed salad sitting by Nathaniel’s left elbow.

(It is certainly more palatable than wondering if her suggestion to move their center of operations to his place was actually something closer to a test of temptation – the desire to see if she can avoid sticking her hand into the fire.)

Nathaniel rolls his eyes and reaches to make additional notes for revisions, unable to avoid jostling Rebecca in the process.

“Hey!” Rebecca protests, jerking away from the sting and the unwanted sparks that dance up her skin at the contact.

This is ridiculous; they are supposed to be finished, completely and totally _done_ , but it’s hard to remember when every time she so much as breathes the wrong way they brush together in barely-tangible ways that warm the back of her neck and under her blouse and between her legs. And if frustration is making _her_ prickly, she can only imagine the similar havoc it is wreaking in Nathaniel.

“This table has three other sides, you know,” he says irritably. “Just take your pick.”

“Because the papers are on _this_ side and I can’t exactly read print upside down,” snaps Rebecca.

Nathaniel angles his head to give her a particularly nasty side-eye. “We could just sit across from each other, you know, the way we do at the office.”

“And have to yell at each other? Forget it.”

“Well, stop kicking me. Who are you trying to be? Hope Solo?”

Rebecca brandishes her index finger at him. “I know you are making that reference to confuse me, but I totally followed those salary negotiations, so I’m happy to take that compliment.”

“Whatever. Stop being such a child,” he says, as if he has the upper hand when it comes to behaving in a mature and reasonable fashion, and the frustration she had been trying to keep at the fringes of her consciousness flares to life.

“Takes one to know one,” she snipes, and when he tries to object, she stuffs a piece of chicken into his mouth before he can get the words out.

The situation promptly devolves from there.

But it _is_ the last time, finally.

(At least in his apartment.)

3.

Eighteen months after that whirlwind of love confessions, soul searching, and active steps towards character growth that Nathaniel cannot even _begin_ to summarize, he finds himself back in his old West Covina apartment, anticipating Rebecca’s imminent arrival.

They’ve kept in touch sporadically during his absence. Not regularly, but often enough for her to extend him an invitation to her musical debut. Enough that he makes a point of letting her know when he’s moving back.

Within hours of his plane landing, she texted him a proposal to meet for dinner, just the two of them.

It almost seems something like a fresh start. On the other hand, maybe her life has gotten full enough that sticking to time tables is no longer the anathema it was before. But if the last few years have taught him anything, it’s that he is not nearly the logical pragmatist he thought he was.

When he opens the door at her knock, she practically spills into the room, going up on her toes to fling a one-armed hug around his shoulders. He returns it, mindful not to crush the groceries swinging from her other hand, that nearly get caught between them.

“So, what are we making here?” he asks, closing the door before following her as she heads straight for the kitchen.

“Nothing too fancy,” she says, setting the shopping bags on his counter. “I have ground beef and mushrooms and bell peppers, and we are just going to be stuffing one into the other. And don’t freak out about the cheese—unlike some people, my taste buds like to experience that extra burst of joy occasionally. So, it almost goes without saying: you’re not allowed to have any. Think you can handle it?”

“I’ll resist the temptation,” he quips. It’s not meant to be an innuendo, but the corner of Rebecca’s mouth tips up, like she’s on the verge of teasing him, but then she seems to think the better of it, pulling out the cutting board to start the prep.

Cooking together is more natural than he expected; it turns out, he’s not the only one who had started cooking regularly in the last year. Between paying for music lessons, running a barely-profitable pretzel stand — “Let me be clear, it _is_ profitable. Our accounts are totally in the black. Like, maybe only a centimeter in the black, but it counts” — and paying the lion’s share of the rent on her apartment, Rebecca was finally obligated to bow to the necessity of budgeting, and Uber Eats got the axe.

Preparing the food is easy enough, what is far more engaging is the conversation. This is an old pattern that Nathaniel is more than happy to fall back into, this easy rhythm as she brings up to speed on how all of the weirdos in West Covina have been in his absence – biographical details about Josh’s new girlfriend, Heather’s hot tub adventures, and a mysterious egg incident at Serrano’s no one else will explain—Rebecca has them all and is more than happy to spill, as long as he keeps answering her questions in turn, and she has questions about everything:

Where did he stay? (a decent apartment, slightly faulty air conditioning, really weird neighbors)

What it was like living with monkeys? (challenging, but fun)

Did he date anyone while he was working at the sanctuary? (no)

“Very cool,” she says noncommittally at his last response, ignoring his inquiring look. “These need to go in the oven for thirty minutes.”

Their new ease is everything that Nathaniel (cautiously) wanted out of a reunion, enough so that when the food is ready, he’s surprised at how Rebecca takes the seat at the far end of the table, without even a ghost of a suggestion to do otherwise. The sharp sting low in his stomach feels far more like a rejection than it should, and he pushes it down sharply. It’s fine, most likely they just let themselves be too familiar with each other too early in the evening, so now she’s pulling back a little. It might be a little disappointing, but it is understandable. After all, the last time she sat there willingly was after the incident with his father’s secretary, when he hadn’t been sure how to proceed and she hadn’t known how he was going to react.

It is not a pleasant recollection, especially as it becomes increasingly clear during their meal that Rebecca is no longer entirely comfortable, fidgeting in her seat and talking too fast. For the first time that evening, the conversation falters, as he starts and Rebecca jumps in, or she starts and he tries to interject, and they both keep apologizing for talking over each other.

Perhaps the formality of their arrangement isn’t quite right; Nathaniel is considering how to tactfully suggest moving to the couch without seeming presumptuous when Rebecca abruptly straightens up and fixes him with such a direct, piercing look that his thoughts go completely silent. He tilts his head and inclines his body towards her, waiting.

“Nathaniel?”

“Yeah?”

He speaks softly, but it seems only make her more nervous. She takes a deep breath and pushes her plate away, folding her hands directly in front of her.

“Where do you see yourself in the next five years?” she blurts out.

The question is somehow both so formal yet also so absurd that Nathaniel is just left blinking, completely flummoxed.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I thought I had my last job interview on Monday, and I’m pretty sure I was interviewing for a law firm, not a pretzel stand. What’s going on?”

Rebecca groans and puts her head in her hands. “Sorry, it’s the table — I thought I needed the distance to think but now it just feels weird.” She steeples her fingers together and presses them to her lips, as if aligning her thoughts. Her gaze flicks back to him, eyes wide. “What I mean is: how long are you going to stay in West Covina?”

He blinks at her, bewildered. “I mean, I’m planning on staying. The sanctuary was always meant to be a sabbatical. I thought I told you about this—did I not mention that?”

“I know, I know, but to be fair, when you decided to go to Guatemala that whole thing came around _really_ quickly. One day I’m sitting on your couch finding out there were horses and a ring in our hypothetical future and the next day it’s like, ‘hey, Bunch, let’s get you up to speed on my cases at the county jail because I’m moving out of the country’. Which you have to admit, was a pretty perpendicular move from where I expected you to go.”

Nathaniel frowns, because that is not how he remembers it: after his initial bout of bad behavior with the death camping, he had made a point of being especially conscientious about not leaving his responsibilities hanging. Sticking it to his father didn’t mean he could just leave his responsibilities hanging, however supportive Bert and Darryl were of the gesture.

But Rebecca is still talking. “Therefore, in the interest of full transparency, I wanted to confirm first and foremost that we’re on the same page of the atlas, here.”

She’s nervous, he realizes. He knows she gets nervous, but he is so used to considering her as a sheer force of nature, but there is no other way to describe her discomfort, the way she pushes the remains of the stuffed peppers around her plate, puts down the fork to grab her glass for a quick sip, only to pick it back up again. Whatever she wants to say has weight, and the anticipation tightens his stomach further. Maybe having this conversation over food was a bad idea.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says, carefully. “Geographically or otherwise.”

“Really?”

 “Yes. I want to stay in West Covina, weird as it gets. I want to stay near my friends, near Darryl…near you,” he adds, grasping the line she seems to have cast to him. “If that’s what you’re looking for.”

Rebecca exhales and looks at him with such frank relief that he’s nearly giddy with it.

“Okay, that’s good to hear,” she says, a little too quickly. “Like, really, really good. Because, frankly, timing has always been the thing that’s against us. Chemistry, we’ve always had—”

Nathaniel can’t help smirking at the fact because well, _yes_ , and Rebecca grins brightly at him in acknowledgment before continuing, “And our communication has only gotten better over time, especially now that we’ve worked on ourselves a bit. But yeah—timing. We officially have timing.”

“Now we have timing,” he echoes, not quite believing it.

“Right. It’s all ours now.” Rebecca gives him a small, serious nod, and takes another steadying breath. “So, anything we screw up is entirely our fault. Our responsibility. We’ll have to just work through it and do our best.”

“We do,” he allows.

“Cool. Because, honestly, I don’t want to waste any time. Not that it means I want to be engaged in like, two months, either, because I’ve done that rodeo before and it was a rough ride.”

“I remember, I was kind of there,” Nathaniel reminds her, a little embarrassed because yes, he would have done proposed had she chosen him, the idea had held a powerful appeal during the entire bizarre ordeal that was _The Bachelor: West Covina edition_ , but he likes to think that time has definitely given him some serious perspective.

“Okay, good,” she says. “So…we’re doing this?”

“I think we’re doing this,” says Nathaniel, trying to tamp down on his own anticipation, but it’s not enough to stop the stupid grin that’s spreading across his face. And it’s worth it, in the way she slumps back against her chair, her shoulders slack with relief and a delighted answering smile blossoming across her face.

“Good,” she says, picking up the napkin that has been resting in her lap and dropping it onto the table. “And while we have plenty of talking to do for the future, I think that’s enough for right now.”

Her delight has deepened into mischief, eyes gleaming and cheeks dimpling, a flirtatious look he was once intimately acquainted with and is more than keen on knowing again.

“Fine by me,” he says, also tossing his napkin on the table. “Come here.”

“No way, you come here,” says Rebecca, crooking a finger at him to emphasis the command. He shrugs and obeys. only he’s barely two steps out of his seat before she bounces out of hers and around the other side of the table.

Suddenly suspicious, he takes two steps to the left – she moves two to the right. He takes one step to the right, and she does the exact same thing to the left. He stops and folds his arms, raising his eyes at her.

“What happened to not wasting time?” he asks, cocking his head to the side, mock-annoyed.

“Who says we’re wasting time?” She asks innocently. “Because I remember you saying something about how much you enjoyed the chase. I’m just playing along.”

He narrows his eyes at her, trying not to appear too amused. “Since when?”

“Oh, come on, this long dumb table isn’t bringing up any memories? Like, say, the conference room and my surprising nimbleness?” She sidles a little further to the right. “I thought you’d enjoy drawing out the anticipation a bit more.”

Ah. Well. Among the many qualities he loved about Rebecca, her playfulness has always been close to the top of the list, and he’s more than happy to go along with this particular brand of teasing.

“I remember,” he says, nodding sagely. “You were indeed surprisingly nimble. But, then again, I’m not too bad myself.”

Rebecca shrieks as Nathaniel plants his palm down on the table and uses the leverage to vault over to her side, stealing her advantage, and she promptly takes off around the perimeter of the apartment. The short-lived play-slash-chase ends, unsurprisingly, by the bed, where she slows down and pivots to let him scoop her up, and then it becomes less a question of who caught who and more of a question of how quickly they can get reacquainted.

4.

If she was asked, Rebecca would estimate that Nathaniel’s apartment is not intended to hold more than six people comfortably at one time. Which makes their current situation, cramming twelve of their closest friends in one living space, all the more amusing.

The gathering was supposed to be held at her place, but there had been a miscommunication with AJ about taking over the common area of their house and thanks to the stipulations of their cohabitation contract, AJ and his ironic knitting party won. Both Heather and Darryl’s houses are undergoing renovations, while the Proctor living room has already been claimed for a West Brovina rehearsal that Paula is keen to avoid.

Not to mention, it’s not like she volunteered his place – Nathaniel did offer his apartment without any outside prompting.

(Rebecca suspects that he did not actually expect the group mind to take him up on it.)

Truthfully, it’s not so bad – the room feels more cozy than crowded, and she likes seeing how their friends have made themselves at home in the normally immaculate space. Heather and Paula have commandeered the bed to sit and chat, while Darryl balances on the edge with his youngest daughter on his lap. The sitting area has been taken over by Hector, Beth, Vic, Rosa, and Josh and a stack of board games – currently, _Romancing Mr. Darcy_ is in play. In the kitchen, Valencia, Greg, and Whijo are taking turns unpacking their offerings and trying to order each other around. There is a massive spread of plates across every flat surface in the apartment, more than can be reliably stored in his fridge. Even Nathaniel’s ridiculous but sturdy table, too big for two but far too small for twelve, groans under the weight.

As for Nathaniel himself…

She finds him standing by the table, surveying the bustle with the faintly surprised air of someone who doesn’t mind it as much as he thought he would. She doubts he is going to be pleased about the cleanup later, but he doesn’t seem nearly as tense as he was earlier in the evening, when they had been prepping the apartment in anticipation of an onslaught.

After setting down her own offering of noodle kugel, balancing it at the very edge of the table, Rebecca steps into place besides him, slipping an arm around his middle as she joins him in his survey of the room.

“This may be the only time I ever say this, so mark it well: you might need a bigger table.”

“Maybe. Or, counterpoint, we might just need a bigger place,” he corrects, and the switch in pronouns has her looking up at him in surprise.

“That might not be such a bad idea,” she says, and leans closer when he winds one arm around her back. His other hand comes up to gently circle her wrist as it rests at his waist. It’s not entirely out of nowhere; they’ve been idly playing with the idea for a while, and even excluding the size of this particular gathering, Nathaniel’s apartment is feeling a little snug these days, with Rebecca’s spare keyboard stand leaning against her side of the bed, her toiletries in the medicine cabinet, and half of her clothes in his closet.

It might be time to seriously consider the possibility—

“Ha! Eat your heart out, Caroline!” whoops Josh, almost knocking over a lamp as he enthusiastically punches a groaning Hector in the shoulder.

Provided the apartment is still standing in the morning, of course.

5.

The trophies and books have been packed away, the bed stripped of sheets and the mattress prepped, even the chairs are stacked and ready for the movers to come to take them away.

Ironically, the table is one of the few pieces of furniture left standing, so when Nathaniel reemerges from the bathroom after scouring for any final toiletries, he’s not entirely surprised to find that Rebecca is sitting on the tabletop itself, with their takeout.

He’s still a _little_ surprised, mind, but it’s manageable enough.

Too tired to protest, Nathaniel hoists himself up to join her, crossing his legs and accepting the carton Rebecca passes to him. The table has taken more stress from their other activities— sitting quietly isn’t going to hurt it.

They’ve drawn back the curtains to watch the sun set, the hazy sky starting to blush the deep pink of sunset.

“You know, I’ve always loved this view.” Rebecca muses, “Like, it’s no Manhattan skyline, but it’s really nice.”

“Do you miss it?”

Rebecca picks through the contents of the carton, briefly averting her eyes. “Well, _miss_ might be too strong a word, but it was…a touchstone. It could be grounding, sometimes, to see it.”

He thinks he gets it; he feels the same way about LA: it was beautiful, it was home, but he was never in the right mind space to really enjoy it.

Whatever brief melancholy took hold of Rebecca quickly passes – the next thing he knows, she’s grinning and holding out her takeout carton as if she’s making a toast. “Farewell, modest-yet-beloved skyline! We shall miss you dearly.”

She gestures at him to join. Nathaniel sighs but obeys without question, bringing up his own carton so that they tap together.

“To the new place,” he says.

“One condominium with a full kitchen, coming right up,” Rebecca makes an extravagant gesture with her chopsticks before popping another piece of orange chicken into her mouth. “I can’t wait. Maybe this dumb table will actually fit properly.”

Nathaniel rolls his eyes. “Quit knocking the table. It’s coming with us—end of story.”

“Well, yeah, _fine,_ but only because you agreed to let the fish be prominently featured in our home.”

“Of course,” says Nathaniel, amused despite his exhaustion.

Rebecca hums in satisfaction at the acknowledgement and snuggles in closer as they look out over the manmade mesas of West Covina, just now beginning to flicker to life.

+1

The table does give out eventually.

Fortunately, not while they are on top of it.

However, the leftmost leg chooses to break right as they are setting the places for their guests, taking a lot of their dinnerware with it.

For a long moment they both just stare at the mess in mutual, silent incomprehension.

“Well, on the bright side, there is no question that the salad has been properly tossed,” says Rebecca at last, and is gratified to hear Nathaniel’s huff of amusement, despite the unpleasant left turn their evening has taken. “Just brush it back into the bowl and we can serve it like nothing happened.”

“Only if your girl cluster likes shards of glass with their cherry tomatoes,” says Nathaniel, setting down the two wineglasses that managed to survive the destruction back on the kitchen counter.

“I mean, just serving salads as part of the main course is already a specific kind of torture, but I see your point. So, what do you want to do with all this?”

“Get the glass cleared up, but I think we’ll have to set up the back patio.”

“Yeah, definitely. But hey—look on the bright side, now we can get a new table. Just like you always wanted!”

“Fine by me,” says Nathaniel, already picking his way over to the closet where they keep the broom and dustpan. He calls over his shoulder, “But remember: you pick the table, the fish gets it.”

“Buddy, that was so not part of the original agreement…” says Rebecca, following closely behind.

Bickering amiably and with affection, they get to work setting things right.

 


End file.
